


it's alright if you do (that's fine)

by Elsinore_and_Inverness



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Computer Game: Discworld Noir, Gen, Let's call it symbolism and not "characters staring at things", Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-13
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:26:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 676
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28051632
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elsinore_and_Inverness/pseuds/Elsinore_and_Inverness
Summary: "We don’t have enough information to predict what they will do next. Do you often think about death, Drumknott?” Vetinari did not pause long enough between the statement and the question to signal a shift in the conversation, but Drumknott was used to that.
Relationships: Havelock Vetinari/Samuel Vimes, Rufus Drumknott & Havelock Vetinari
Comments: 5
Kudos: 11





	it's alright if you do (that's fine)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song Glory and Gore

Drumknott was usually able to identify the direction, if not the intensity, of his Lordship’s emotional state—for instance now he was gripping the edge of the desk, knuckles white, but his hands were so thin that the bones showed through without any pressure.

“You are angry,” he observed.

“I didn’t know Saipha very well, but he was one of my clerks.” Vetinari leaned into the vowels with all the protectiveness and sense of failed duty of a ship’s captain losing a sailor and Drumknott realized the Patrician was not holding back anger but rather holding onto it, like one might cling to a cooling coal ember on a freezing night. “He should not have been in danger and no one should die like that.”

“There are worse ways to go than drowning.”

Vetinari let go off the desk, the shift of tendons in the back of his hand showing he had indeed been gripping it with considerable force. “And many better.”

“You and Commander Vimes anticipate each other’s moves so much these days, it’s like watching a dance, although,” Drumknott’s small smile would have been a chuckle in more demonstrative company, “I was wondering if you two would rather have been alone.”

“We were overheard,” Vetinari pointed out coolly. He had put something around the anger now, to keep it burning.

“Why hire Selachii to inhume Bennett’s murderer?” Drumknott asked referring to the guard who had been killed outside the Oblong Office. One of the strong points of the palace guards was that they were difficult to distract and they were taking the loss of one of their own much harder than the clerks. The dark clerks expected mortal danger, the guards were mostly there for show.

The part of Drumknott that was a bit of a bastard wondered if Bennett had perhaps accidentally cut himself listening in on Vetinari and Vimes’ conversation. He didn’t blame him one bit, he would have done the same thing if he had been holding anything sharp.

“Have you seen Remora’s track record lately?”

Drumknott pushed his glasses up his nose. “I don’t think failure to inhume Bud y Celyn is indicative of—“

“Some of us can write our way out of the story, others watch the story write itself out of our way.”

“Saipha would look at the ground when he laughed,” Drumknott said slowly. “I remember standing next to him in the office down the hall.”

“Please sit down.”

“It just hit me all of a sudden.”

Vetinari watched Rufus’s expression as he dripped a pen in and inkwell and scraped the excess off the side. “One of my parents was drowned the same way. I believe Hwel looked over the records of the murder.”

“These are all deaths copied out of plays, aren’t they?”

“Hwel writes tragedies. We don’t have enough information to predict what they will do next. Do you often think about death, Drumknott?” Vetinari did not pause long enough between the statement and the question to signal a shift in the conversation, but Drumknott was used to that.

Rufus watched a tiny drop of ink break off of the end of the pen nib and land on the dark wood of the desk. It did not have quite enough surface tension to form a bead so it lay in a sort of oblong puddle between the darkest lines in the grain of the wood. “Not actually. Danger, certainly, but not death. It does not occupy my thoughts. I don’t think I have known many people that have died. Maybe ten? Family friends and colleagues.”

“You pray to a god and believe in an afterlife.”

“That is not the purpose of religion.”

“Of course not.”

Drumknott glanced at the silver skull on top of Vetinari’s cane but saw only the room reflected in its cranium, windows curving toward the ceiling, the ceiling darker than the walls despite being painted a lighter color. Shadows and light showed more clearly on the small curved surface than they did observed directly. It was an odd thing, perspective. 


End file.
